


every little thing matters

by lazulisong



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Food, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek had a family, you know. They had traditions. He didn't just spring out of some sinkhole of the Preserve, leather jacketed. The others can just stop giving him that look.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. January

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daunt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daunt/gifts), [coinin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coinin/gifts).



> I was like, I have this half finished scene where Derek cooks because I'm tired of Stiles just being mom all the time, I should ... not do that. Annnnd Daunt was like YES DO IT and I was like, UGH ON YOUR HEAD BE IT.
> 
> SEASONAL FOOD IS BEST OKAY. 
> 
> Coinin and I independently came up with the idea of the Hales being Irish, and then we spent an evening hammering it out; as I recall we decided they immigrated during the Potato Famine and promptly went out West where there was territory to spare and relatively few humans, intermarrying as they went. I think we decided they were Scots-Irish? Sorry guys. I figure werewolves are pretty much all at least fifth cousins, between one thing and another, unless they're bitten.
> 
> Also if anybody has a good idea for a seasonal food please feel free to suggest it to me, because I'm sure I'll be flailing for ideas around like, July.
> 
> Also also please note that this is going to be a little disjointed and weird because it's basically twelve short fics about food that tie together and also also also I am also a little disjointed and weird myself. I try hard? Anyway there should be forward movement but ... yeah. Sorry, guys.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Black-eyed peas to keep you humble, so you'll have good luck the rest of the year.

Derek's great-great-grandmother was from one of the old families, a _loup garou_ pack from the Deep South. She was born human and didn't get the bite until she married into the Hales, when her husband's mother gave it to her. Peter remembers her, a tiny white-muzzled wolf with the pale green-grey eyes Derek inherited from her. There used to be a picture, before -- before everything -- of Derek, a month or two old, in her arms. Derek was not a small baby, but she held him easily.

She was the one who brought in most of the Hale pack traditions. It's not that they were barbarians, or didn't care about traditions at all, but the Hale pack had come over from the Old Country a step ahead of the famine and remembering things was the second to last thing on their minds. Even a wolf will starve on rotten potatoes, his mother used to say. His great-great-grandmother brought two hundred uninterrupted years of traditions with her, and also her recipes and her magic, most valued of all, with her books of recipes and her connections to most of the packs in the country. It had been an arranged marriage, but her husband was devoted to her. She loved him too, but she was like Laura, always looking outward.

Derek remembers rummaging in the trunk of her belongings, the sweet-dusty smell of herbs and old lavender sachets. The trunk had survived the fire, but neither Derek or Peter had the heart to open it. It's in the loft now, hidden in a back corner. Derek piles all of Stiles' books and papers on top of it after he forgets them there.

Every New Year she and her son and her granddaughter would make black eyed peas for the rest of the pack, with the hand-canned tomatoes and dried peas and herbs they'd grown themselves. The alpha was the provider, and on feast days she cooked enough for three packs the size of the Hales, enough to send home with cousins and eat for days afterward.

It's always been an alpha thing, and Peter and his siblings, and later Derek and his cousins, had hung around the edges watching Grandpa and Derek's mom and Laura cutting and chopping and boiling and laughing.

He doesn't know if he can do this. He doesn't even know if he should do this. He's got some pre-soaked peas from Whole Foods and a ham hock and some bacon and the notebook that Laura had written down the recipes she'd gotten from their cousins in Louisiana in. An onion and some garlic and a can of tomatoes and some of the salt and pepper and spices Stiles had left at the house the last time he'd made chicken dumplings are sitting on the counter waiting for him to _make up his freaking mind_ already. The spice jars smell a little like Stiles, which is more comforting than it really should be.

Stiles would tell him he was being an idiot and to just cook the damn peas already. It's not like he has to make everything by hand the hard way. He's half-ashamed of himself, buying from the store like this, but he doesn't have a garden and he was never really good at it anyway. Derek was always the one weeding, never the one planting, and he's never been good at canning. He can snap beans like a champ, but cooking the tomatoes and making the jams set is a little beyond him. _We'll find something else you're good at,_ his mother promised him, _not everybody has to have the knack_.

And now he's the only one left. He's the link between the new Hale pack and the old, and the thought frightens him more every time he thinks about it. It shouldn't be him. It should have been any of the others; Laura with her steady hands, Peter before the fire burned away everything good about him. They would know what they were doing. Derek is just blundering.

Once his father had told him, laughing, but mostly serious, "Everybody's blundering, buddy. Some people are just more used to working through it."

To hell with it, he thinks, and he sets the ham hock to cook. It's going to take a couple of hours, so he lays everything else out and starts cleaning the rest of the loft. He'll text the others later, tell them to stop by first thing on New Year's day. Maybe if he asks real nice Boyd will get his mom to make cornbread.

Stiles is the first one there, of course, on New Year's day. Derek was kind of expecting it because he knows Stiles' dad was working overnight, trying to keep drunks from killing themselves and others, but Stiles gets there at like eight in the morning and leans on the doorbell like he hopes that Derek is still hungover. Joke was on Stiles, Derek hadn't been drunk since he was eighteen years old and Laura had gotten the special whiskey from their Lousiana cousins.

"Heeeeyyyy," he drawls, and sniffs the air hopefully. "What's that? It smells like pig in here. So much delicious pig."

"You're a pig," says Derek by rote, and then, "Great, now I'm gonna have bad luck all year."

"What," says Stiles loudly. "I am the best luck." He kicks off his shoes and pushes his way to the kitchen bar, flailing his way onto a barstool. He kicks off his shoes and pushes his way to the kitchen bar, flailing his way onto a barstool. He leans his elbows on the counter and his head on his hands, staring at Derek with bright interested eyes. He looks like a squirrel, thinks Derek. He's smiling a little, pleased with himself, pleased that he's in Derek's space and Derek isn't baring his fangs at him. "I am the _best luck ever_."

"You're really not," Derek tells him, but he dishes up a big bowl of the black eyed peas and thumps a giant square of cornbread beside it, and sets it down in front of Stiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek complains about bad luck because you're supposed to have a tall black haired man come into the house first on the New Year. 
> 
> Recipes for black eyed peas are fairly copious online, but mine basically involves "boil pig in whatever you have to hand, but put wine or sherry to taste in it, put the soaked peas in the pig juice, add tomatoes and/or kale as looks good, season to taste, but rather strongly, simmer until it smells right." Good for cold, wet days like we get here in January. (And are still having in April, sigh.)
> 
> I don't have a good recipe for cornbread, sorry.


	2. Febuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tangentially about pancakes, but mostly about memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this has a lot to do with Christian tradition, and I am 100% not trying to preach or act like it's the only or best religious tradition. If I'm going to talk about someone's religious tradition I'd rather make a muck of my own, is all. 
> 
> RELATEDLY: to my mother's continued if loving bafflement, apparently if you are raised Catholic, become Evangelical Protestant with a side order of Charismaticism, raise your daughters in that tradition and then tell them they should think and read for themselves, _apparently_ you end up with feminist agnostic Episcopalians. Well, and our older sister, who is a Word of Faither. We don't talk about religion. Or ... anything but her kids, really. Also I literally have not darkened the door of a church for like two and a half years because of my work schedule, which makes me sad.
> 
> Shrove Tuesday = Mardi Gras. Because the English are boring, instead of wild parties before Lent, we eat pancakes and count it debauchery. 
> 
> Lent = 40 day period before Easter that most Christian traditions spend in fasting, abstinence and prayer before Easter. In churches that follow the liturgy, all decorations are taken down until Easter Sunday.
> 
> Holy Week = the week before Easter, celebration of the Passion of Christ, winding up with Good Friday, which is solemn, Holy Saturday, which is just depressing, especially in a climate like Oregon, and Easter Sunday, which is awesome because for the first time in a month and a half you get to say Hallelujah and eat delicious food. 
> 
> St Bride is one of the names of St Bridget of Ireland, who is um how to say tactfully a very important but semi-historical saint of Ireland, and actually probably originally was a goddess that got repainted when Christianity was introduced, just like three quarters of the Saint's Calender. 
> 
> THANK YOU FOR THE LOVELY COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS I LOVE YOU ALL VERY MUCH SEE YOU NEXT TIME &HEARTS

Boyd doesn't really ask Derek to help out on Shrove Tuesday so much as he shows up at the loft one day, shoves Derek's jacket at him and says, "St Bride's Pancake Feed is tonight."

Derek hasn't kept Lent since his family all died because of him and he had to flee across the country with his sister. They tried going to church a couple of times but the churches didn't smell like St Bride and it was, to put it mildly, a test of Laura's faith to have her family be burnt to death for no reason she could tell. Derek had always been one of those sort of agnostic kids that went to church because their family went to church and was expected to go to college and become a flaming atheist, so he didn't have much faith to lose..

After the fire he'd decided if there was a God he was probably going straight to hell, so for his own sanity he chose not to believe in God. He was already in hell anyway, right? They made an effort sometimes around Christmas and Easter to attend services, but it wasn't the same, even the time they were in Louisiana with their cousins. It was worse, almost, because Derek was terrified he was going to lead hunters to his cousins' pack, and his cousins weren't sure how to treat them, the leftovers of a dead pack.

Before the fire, though, they did a lot of stuff with St Bride's; the Loaves and Fishes stuff and the food drives, taking a Sunday every quarter and baking about a thousand cookies for coffee hour, arranging flowers for the altar and sanctuary. Peter and his mom were really, really good at making fir sheaves for Christmas, and Derek remembers the smell of it soaking into the house, the way they would toss the bits and pieces into the fire and how it would crackle and snap with the resin, the nose tickling sharpness of the scent.

Now, though, Derek says, "What does that have to do with me?" and Boyd gives him the dead inside look of someone who has been hauling pancake mix and Costco sized flats of egg and boxes of bacon around for hours already and says,

"We need cooks. I know you know how to deal with that stupid stove, so come on."

The St Bride stove was installed in 1982 and should have been replaced six years ago, but the church spent a lot of money on it and it's a perfectly good stove still. It just has a reputation of being hateful and fussy, especially during Loaves and Fishes or the Pancake Feed, which it apparently regards as a insult and a imposition when it should be alone in the dark kitchen on a peaceful Tuesday night. For whatever reason the Hale family had always had better luck managing it than the rest of the volunteers -- which meant, of course, with their werewolf senses they could tell when it just needed a jiggle and when it needed a sharp kick to remind it of its place in the world.

"It's not Shrove Tuesday already," says Derek, when he actually means he's not a member of St Bride's any more and is kind of terrified to step foot in it, with the memories of his family and the church ladies with their kind or judging or pitying looks all laying in wait for him.

"Yes, it is," says Boyd grimly.

It's not that Derek doesn't believe Boyd exactly, but he pulls out his phone and googles _Lent dates 2015_ anyway. He looks up at Boyd and Boyd gives him the look that means Derek may be the alpha but he is also kind of a crazy person who needs to be told what to do for his own good at least seventy percent of the time. Derek would resent it more, but it's pretty much why he offered Boyd the bite in the first place. "Are you sure?" he says instead.

"My mom told me to ask you," says Boyd, and Derek puts the coat on, because you disobey Mrs Boyd at your own peril. She and Derek's mom had ruled the altar guild for years, and Derek knows that if he tries to avoid helping at the Pancake Feed there is going to be passive aggressive vegetarian casseroles delivered by Boyd until the end of Lent.

Derek's never liked casseroles.

"She says she wants to see you at the service tomorrow but I told her I didn't think that was going to happen," adds Boyd, which is a mercy Derek wasn't expecting. Boyd will show up tomorrow night with everybody else and eat cheese pizza and drink Sprite and ignore Stiles wanting to know why there's a grey smudge on his forehead until he gets tired of it and wrestles him all across the loft's living area floor; he's not gonna say a word about Lent until it's Holy Week and he can't come to the regularly scheduled Friday gaming night at Stiles' house because he's singing at the multi-church service with the Lutherans and the Presbyterians. Apparently Stiles sort of wants to go to one of the services and Boyd has vetoed it on grounds of the actual candles used at the end of the service. Even Stiles admits that's pretty fair.

When they get to St Bride's, Mrs Boyd meets him with a giant hug and an apron. Derek says, "Are you sure you want me --"

Mrs Boyd gives him a look and says, "God loves you, Derek," which means that she has overridden like five people coming up to her with concerns about how he showed up just after his sister passed away and got questioned by the police, and drives around in a black shiny penis car, and hangs around with teenagers a lot, and he'd better put on the apron and behave himself.

Derek puts on the apron, and behaves himself.

There's a rhythm he remembers, pouring out the pancake mix from the jug, watching for the bubbles on the surface of the batter, flipping them and then sliding them off into the tray. It's very soothing, and Derek falls into it, pouring and flipping and kicking the stove when it rattles at him. The kitchen is full of the smell of bacon and eggs and the sugar syrup and butter. He's not listening to the other workers, and only grunts when they talk to him, says "Yes" or "Not yet" when they ask him questions. They're used to him. He was always a pretty quiet kid, the quiet Hale, compared to Laura, at least, but everybody was quiet as compared to her.

An hour or an eternity later Mrs Boyd taps him on the shoulder and hands him a plate stacked with bacon and eggs and about ten pancakes. "Go," she says. "We're good now."

"Shouldn't I --" he begins. It's always hardest to find people to help clean up. His dad was always willing to do it, rattling the dishes around in the sink and putting them in the dishwasher cheerfully. "I could help clean the stove."

"No, I've got plenty of help," says Mrs Boyd, only slightly ominously, and pushes him toward the fellowship hall.

He slinks around the edges, trying to find a place to sit that isn't full of people who want to tell him they're sorry for his loss or stare at him curiously or scoot away from him like he's got the plague. Most of the seats are still taken, and he's debating sitting out in the back area of the building with the smokers standing on the sidewalk, just off the church's property, or asking Mrs Boyd for foil and taking it home, when he hears a voice call, "Hale! Derek Hale!"

Then he hears a voice hiss, "Daaaaaad", and tries not to cringe. He turns around to see the sheriff standing up at the table he's sitting at with Stiles and beckoning him. Fleeing from the sheriff, even at a pancake feed, seems like a worse life decision than usual; Derek sets his mouth and marches over there, trying to look like he eats pancakes with Stiles and his father all the time, and nobody's staring at him with avid interest.

"Sir," he says, sitting down. "Stiles."

"Didn't expect to see you here," says the sheriff, and smacks Stiles' hand away when it tried to replace the jug labeled BOYSENBERRY with the one labeled SUGAR FREE. "How are things going for you? Get a job?"

Derek is sole recipient of five life insurance policies, owns valuable property that several developers would love to pay him a great deal of money for, and has stocks and investments of his own now; what the Sheriff is actually asking him is if he's going to rejoin human society any time soon. "I've been doing some computer stuff," he says, which isn't a lie. "For some people I knew in New York."

The Sheriff makes a noise in his throat, surprisingly like the one Stiles makes when he's not feeling up to the effort of calling you on your bullshit. "Going to school now?"

"No, sir," says Derek.

"Dad," says Stiles, "eat your pancakes, you're an embarrassment to me, this isn't an interrogation, God."

"No I'm not," says the Sheriff, but starts eating his pancakes. Stiles stabs his own pancakes aggressively and crams at least a quarter of his plate into his mouth all at once.

"You're gonna choke," says Derek, almost involuntarily.

Stiles sticks his tongue out at him, covered with pieces of chewed pancakes.

"Now who's the embarrassment," says the sheriff, and Stiles laughs. It's a nice sound. Derek likes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a recipe for pancakes either. My relationship with baking powder involves suspicion and tears and buying Bisquik like the Lord in Their infinite loving-kindness invented. Have the pan _hot_ but not _too_ hot, use whole milk and eggs even if the mix says you don't need them, and butter lavishly.


	3. March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> St Patrick's day and getting the garden ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! My sister gave me Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and we had the inspectors in at my work for our license, so pretty much I got home, dragged the cat over and played PMD resentfully until I was able to interact with civilized humans again.
> 
> Also it was apparently super cute of me to think I'd do a thousand words or less per chapter. -_-
> 
> Also apparently in series Erica refuses to take her pills which ... apparently my sister just flushed hers down the toilet (don't do that) and didn't take them during the grand mal period of her life because they didn't work (please don't do that) but dudes. Dudes.

Derek and Peter aren't talking to each other right now; more than usual, at least. Derek doesn't trust Peter and Peter likes secrets more than peace, and to quote Stiles, "he is the actual undead and he's a dick, Derek, your creepy zombie uncle is an asshole who hurts people" unquote, but they usually manage to be civil, because no matter what happens, they're both Hales and Hales stick together. Except for St Patrick's Day, when half the family argues for corned beef and cabbage, and half the family argues for brined pork, which is actually traditional and furthermore doesn't taste like pickles, gristle and despair. It's never been a real family fight, more of a reason to bicker and joke and make both, in the end; any reason to cook was a good one.

Derek hates corned beef and cabbage, and so had Laura, so for the years they were alone they went out and had pastrami sandwiches well away from any St Patrick's day celebrations.

Peter tried to pick up the argument about whether they should have corned beef or pork, and Derek knew he wasn't, probably, trying to hurt Derek badly, but … it hadn't gone well. So now Peter's gone some place he won't have to look at Derek for a while, and Derek shoves a brined pork roast in the slow cooker with carrots and potatoes and resentment and a little salt and pepper and half a small, diced onion.

He texts Erica, _get your real jeans on. picking you up in fifteen._

She texts back, _what are fake jeans then_ but when he pulls up in the truck he borrowed from Boyd's father with all the stuff in back, she's coming out the front door with her hair braided down her back, worn stained jeans and one of Boyd's old lacrosse hoodies and the red Docs he'd bought her last year just because she loved them and it had reminded him of Laura. She wears them all the time, all battered and worn in now, lived in, and he feels a little lighter every time he sees her. She's also wearing full makeup, but she's got her bag with her and _unlike Scott_ Derek knows better than to ask if she's sure she wants to wear makeup when they're obviously going out to get their manual labor on.

Possibly this was because Derek has had more interaction with women than just a mother and an on and off again tragic romance that Derek is just waiting to fizzle out when Allison goes to college and Scott goes to technical school, but Derek tries not to judge. Much. He and Scott still don't get along very well. Mostly Stiles plays mediator until he gets tired of them acting like five year olds saying "He started it!" or Stiles feels honorbound to side with Scott, and then he refuses to talk to Derek for a while. It's aggravating but Derek understands.

"That's real jeans," he says, pointing at her.

"Whatever, boss man, I've never seen you in real ones then," says Erica, squinting at him. Derek likes his jeans fitted, it's true, but he doesn't spend a hundred and fifty bucks on them either. "Is that heavy machinery in the truck? Do I get to run over Scott? Or Peter?"

"Yes, no, and no," says Derek. "You can't run over Scott, Stiles will get mad at you, and you can't run over Peter, he'd heal."

"Wow, the St Patrick's day fight did not go well," says Erica, sliding into the driver's seat and holding out her hand for the keys. Derek sighs but he's spent three months trying to get her used to driving a clutch, so he hands them over. She's actually pretty good at it now, and doesn't slam through the gears or make the truck shake when she puts in the clutch, which is more than he can say for Isaac. He's not gonna let her drive the Camaro yet, but she's getting there.

"Let's not talk about it," says Derek.

"I want to run him over," says Erica, resentfully. "He said I ought to tell my neuro that I'd gotten faith-healed."

"I was there," says Derek, pinching his nose. "We're heading out to the old house. Don't speed."

Erica scowls but turns toward the road to the old Hale house. They drive in silence for a minute and then Derek says, half-unwillingly, "What did you tell your --"

"What Stiles suggested," says Erica. "Except that was a giant pain in my ass because he was right, she _did_ check for ketosis and then I spent half an hour listening to her talk about fad cures and how she hoped I was responsible and just because it was working now didn't mean I wouldn't have a spontaneous relapse and also adults and ketosis-inducing diets were insufficiently studied and she wants me to get a dietitian."

Derek says, "Are you going to get one? Can you afford it?" Stiles had come up with this idea with copious internet research and anecdotal evidence from a kid he knew who knew a kid who went to OSHU who had heard a lady talk about her keto diet and her epilepsy. And it worked, was the main thing, she hadn't had a seizure and was almost over glaring resentfully at the boys when they ate pizzas in front of her.

Erica shrugs.

"Erica," says Derek warningly.

"It might be kind of hard," she says finally. "Like I don't know if Mom's insurance is gonna --"

"Okay," says Derek. Erica flicks a glance over at him and he says, "It's okay. I'll take care of it."

"Whatever, boss," she says, but her shoulders relax.

When they get to the old house, they get out of the truck and lift down the rotor-rooter and carry it to the garden Derek set up last fall; he broke ground then, had the betas and Stiles and Scott carry out rocks and set up a twelve foot fence around it so the deer couldn't jump into it. They spread mulch and straw on it and left it to dream over the winter; now he and Erica are going to dig and soften the ground into beds. It's not a big garden, but it's bigger than any he could have in town, about an eighth of an acre or so, right where the old garden had been. It hadn't been on purpose, exactly, but the asparagus was still grimly growing, refusing to die, and he didn't want to have to put in a separate fence around them to keep the deer away.

They re-plow the garden in half an hour, and then work in silence all day, comfortable, making a pile of stones at one side of the garden, breaking up chunks of sod and raking it smoothly. Derek brings newspaper from the truck and they lay out the pathways between the beds. Later on, before they plant, Derek and Isaac will jury rig a sprinkler system from the pipes by the old house's site.

"We should make a fire pit," says Erica suddenly, looking at the rock pile. Derek winces a little bit, but it's not a bad idea. They can plow the area, tramp it down, lay down weed paper and build up the pit with the stones from the garden. When they lay out the sprinklers they can put a divider in and direct a hose toward the fire pit area. It won't be bad. The humans can sit by it during the summer full moons.

"Not today," he says. "You ready to get home?"

"Sure," she says, flashes a fanged smile at him. "You feeding me, boss?"

"Always," promises Derek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I am told on good authority that Irish people don't care for corned beef and cabbage on St Patrick's day, which relieved me a lot because I was beginning to feel like my ethnic identity, such as it was, was a lie. I've never actually brined a pork roast but I'm also told it's not that hard to do: take a pork butt or shoulder roast or picnic roast, one of the cheap fatty ones, stick it in your brine of choice over night, and roast the next day. 
> 
> There's two methods I like to use: one is just sticking it in the oven for like three hours on a relatively cool oven -- 325F or so -- with chopped root veg, salt, and pepper. Maybe a little wine. The other method is stovetop in a heavy pan and maybe a little wine or water so it doesn't burn before the juices start going. Let simmer, covered for a couple three hours, save the juice for stock, gravy or soup. I'm sure there's a bunch of recipes on the internet, but I think I got my method from the Oregonian. The trick is the long cooking, which dissolves the fat and gelatin in the roast and makes it tender.
> 
> Why I don't like corned beef, which is beef basically made the same damn way, remains a minor mystery of life. I suppose it's because if you can't cook a pork shoulder very well it's still relatively edible but if you cook brined beef wrong it's all gristle and hatred.
> 
> \- Benign dietary ketosis for the treatment of epilepsy is an actual thing; it's the only thing that's successfully treated my sister's epilepsy. Three years and counting!
> 
> Meg: can you eat food that has been cooked with carbs  
> Meg: like if I made a pork roast and it baked with potatoes and carrots can you eat the actual meat part  
> Amy: y  
> Amy: I could just give you the Atkins book at some point  
> Amy: or for that matter check their webpage  
> Amy: I'm stage 1 with some stage 2  
> Meg: but that involves effort when you already know this shit
> 
> \- deer can jump like twice their body height, and they are sneaky motherfuckers about getting into gardens.


	4. April

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> April showers bring something something oh god what is that black mold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I invented a tv show! Well, I told Siobhan that I wanted a TV show to joke about and then things kind of escalated from there, but anyway there's a plot to the TV show now and the alpha werewolf in it looks like Richard Armitage because come on. Basically the internet is full of people that it is a terrible idea to ever allow me to talk to because we just egg each other on mercilessly.

Laura and Derek had kept up separate Netflix accounts because if Laura had to watch one more cooking show or documentary about sad dogs in animal shelters, she was going to put the tv through the wall, and Derek felt approximately the same way about Lifetime movies where someone dies of leukemia and car building shows. They agreed on Mythbusters, that shitty werewolf drama about the chick who was dying of being born first or whatever, and horrible History Channel specials about aliens, but overall it was worth paying for two accounts just to avoid snarling and claws in their tiny apartment with the paper thin walls, especially over flipping Gordon Ramsey.

Then when Laura died Derek just kept up her subscription, and if he was having a really bad day, he'd log into her account (Laura had the worst passwords ever, worse than him or Scott, and it had always driven Peter crazy) and watch a couple shitty car building shows or put a Lifetime special on mute, just for company.

Derek could go outside, do errands, go talk to Isaac at the shop or go over to the vet clinic and avoid Scott's eyes and sit around with the foster puppies, letting them lick at his chin and fall over their own baby-scented feet. It's raining, though, not hard, just enough to make everything wet and miserable; it soaked through his hair when he went outside for the paper. Derek's finally probably grown as a person and hates the judgemental looks Stiles and Lydia give him when they find him doing something specifically because he'll be miserable doing it, and they have a genius for finding him when he's doing it. So instead of running ten miles and coming home to Stiles sitting in his Jeep waiting to wrinkle his nose at him as if Derek smells like wet dog, Derek does fifty reps of push ups and situps and crunches and then decides he's going to make rainy day food and catch up on Moon River. Peter somehow managed to get ahead of him and as far as Peter is concerned, spoilers happen to other people.

Also Laura had been super invested in Richard and Della finally getting together and Derek admits to himself that he's sort of interested in it, too, a little bit. Laura had been kind of pissed when they made the series from the book and changed the younger twin brother into an older sister, but Leilah was pretty much the same character and her romance with the pack's second-in-command was the stupidest thing Derek had ever watched in his life. He thought Della was way better, because she was sarcastic and brave and never gave up, and the time Richard found her crying alone had made Derek and Boyd form a silent pact to never speak of the way they had accidentally both got something in their eyes at the same time.

Anyway, his dad had always taken rainy days watching television super seriously. He didn't get a lot of time to spend with Laura and Derek, partly because he traveled a lot for work, and partly because their mom had by necessity spent more time with them than he had. Still, even though Derek's father wasn't able to run with them at the full moon, he was always waiting when they got home again, smelling of warm human love and fresh bread, spread thick with honey and butter. The next morning they would huddle together in the living room, all wrapped up in blankets, sore from running the night before, and cuddle luxuriously into him, eating toast with peanut butter and bananas sliced on top, watching old cartoons or screwball comedies from the 1930s and 40s.

Derek still can't watch _Bringing Up Baby_ ; he left the loft once when Lydia found it on the classic movie channel and insisted on watching it.

Derek's poking bread into the toaster when the doorbell rings once, sharp. That means it's Lydia, because Stiles just texts like he expects Derek's hand to be glued to his phone like Stiles' is, and Scott just barges his way in fueled by his righteous fury, and Boyd and Erica and Isaac all have keys anyway. Technically Peter doesn't have a key, but that doesn't seem to stop him.

When he opens the door Lydia has a crumbled umbrella and an irritated expression. Derek steps back wordlessly and takes the umbrella as Lydia kicks off her ruined shoes. Lydia's not pack, exactly, but he owes her for what Peter did to her and Stiles, still, loves her. Over time she's found a place for herself with them, even without Jackson. Derek might even say that he's fond of her himself, but the truth is that they have a silent truce brokered mostly on the fact that if Peter gets less than twenty five feet away from Lydia, Derek breaks his fucking arm in three places, no questions asked.

And she's a little like Laura, and it's secretly a little comforting to have her around, because Derek is a crappy alpha for many reasons but specifically because a male alpha is rare to begin with and generally involves actual competence and leadership instead of just outliving your entire pack. Lydia is an alpha female. Around her Derek can just sink back gratefully into being a beta male and nobody calls him on it except Peter's sharp look and maybe Stiles' curiosity, because Lydia is the boss of everybody.

Lydia stalks to the bathroom, still not speaking, and Derek hangs up her wet coat and in equal silence fishes out Erica's yoga pants and a long sleeved shirt, with a science joke Derek isn't quite sure he gets, that Stiles left at the loft a week ago, and pushes them and towels through the smallest possible crack in the door.

Then he goes and makes more toast, because it's clearly that sort of day. Derek's ability to read a situation is legendary in a bad way, but he knows that look on Lydia's set face.

When Lydia comes out he has the Netflix queued up to the episode of _Moon River_ he wants to start out with and two plates of toast on his crappy IKEA coffee table, and the ginger-peach tea that she likes in a tall mug beside her plate. Lydia brings over her tablet and huddles in the corner of the couch opposite to him, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket Isaac had bought and brought home. She looks at him, raises one eyebrow, and Derek starts the file.

When he looks over again, an episode later, to see if she needs more tea, Lydia is sound asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I have a staggering amount of feelings about good toast, I will refrain from word bombing you any more and mention that we traditionally cut the banana into coin slices, but I find if you cut it length wise and resign yourself to eating the weird bits, it covers the toast better. I hear some people put peanut butter _and_ bananas _and_ honey, but that's just heathenism. Honey obviously belongs with butter, real butter, preferably on the sort of bread [with hazelnuts and poppyseeds and maybe sunflower seeds and oat bits in it](http://franzbakery.com/products/franz-natural-breads/oregon-hazelnut-bread). 
> 
> Not mentioned is Derek's giant glass of milk because that's what you drink with banana peanut butter toast.


	5. May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grief's a weird thing: It lies in wait for you, puts a cold hand in yours and walks with you for a while. And it goes away again, with a squeeze of your hand and a promise to be back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for discussion of death, brief indirect mention of suicide, free floating feels, also Derek Hale having a sad, also especially Isaac having a sad, which. A BLOO BLOO BLOO.
> 
> I 100% as always meant to have this out four days ago but apparently I can't go a month without having a cold this year, and then we had a heat streak where I lay around resenting everything, and then we had a pretty grody week at work and three of our residents peaced out, which, I am le bummed, dudes. I am always le bummed, but them's the breaks when you work with ninety year olds. It never really gets easier. But we didn't actually have a lady die over Mother's Day weekend, which was a legitimate worry this year. Small mercies!

Derek has started to dream about asparagus eating him.

The shoots reach up for him as he crosses the garden to weed the peas, zipping out like tentacles and dragging him closer, closer, and he panics and struggles but no, his doom is sealed.

Then he wakes up and remembers that he was the idiot that put fertilizer on the asparagus bed, and whatever happens to him is his own damn fault. Derek really likes asparagus and Peter really likes asparagus, but they've reached the point where there's no possible way to convince themselves to eat it again, not broiled or steamed or baked or in quiche or soup. And the damn things are still growing. Derek all but mowed the damn bed last week, and found a forest of new stalks pushing up the next day.

This is absolutely the last round of stalks, though: after this he's letting it blossom. Even Stiles won't take any more, no matter how healthy it is for his dad, citing funny-smelling pee. Plus apparently his dad had started saying wistfully that he remembers how Stiles' mom had cooked it, with the bacon, you know? and Stiles is not going to be guilt tripped into bacon for his dad.

("Did you try grilling it?" said Derek.

"I came home last night and he was sauteing it in _butter_ ," said Stiles ominously. His mouth was set in the like that meant he was really annoyed by it, too annoyed to see how it was funny, even if it was funny in a terrible way.

"That's really good," said Derek thoughtlessly and Stiles picked up the bag of asparagus, glared at him like a tiny angry kitten confronting a guard dog, and said,

" _Don't_ encourage him, asshole" and stalked off, all righteous anger and the smell of fresh green things.

Derek might have a problem.)

Also, Isaac doesn't like asparagus, and Derek doesn't like the way he eats his portion quickly, like if he hesitates or falters someone's going to make him eat twice as much. So this last batch is going to Loaves and Fishes and good riddance to it.

Derek needs to go out and check if Peter secretly planted more zucchini vines. Peter loves zucchini. Derek tolerates it, but not enough to be eating it in salad and bread and muffins and soup and anything else that could possibly have zucchini put it in it. One year Peter even tried making zucchini cookies, which had not ended well. If Peter's planted more vines than Derek has already planted, someone's going to be calling 911 on Derek, claiming suspicious boxes, and when the bomb squad checks it out, it's going to be nothing but freaking summer squash.

When Derek pulls up to St Bride's, there's cars in the parking lot and it smells like women and girls. When Derek goes into the kitchen he finds out why; there's at least fifty women and girls all wearing scratchy lace and long skirts with ruffles and flowered hats and they're all drinking tea and eating cookies someone bought in bulk at Costco because they promised cookies and then discovered they didn't have time to make them: Derek's never been near a Mother/Daughter Tea but he remembers his mother and Laura carefully hot gluing feathers and silk flowers to hats they bought off eBay and going to them.

He's forgotten it was almost the second week of May.

Something goes tight in his throat. He shuts his eyes for a minute and when he looks up Mrs Boyd is there in a hat with ostrich feathers and a sympathetic expression, blocking his view into the fellowship hall.

"Is that for the Community Kitchen?" she says, acting like everything is normal. Derek is suddenly, shatteringly grateful to her, for her willingness to pretend nothing is wrong.

"The last of it," he manages. "We had a lot this year so-"

"Thanks," says Mrs Boyd, and helps him put it in the refrigerator. She doesn't try to talk to him and Derek desperately pretends he can't hear the voices of the women in the fellowship hall. Derek hasn't heard a group of women speaking for so long. Lydia and Erica speak to him, and sometimes Allison, but it's been so very long that he's heard a group of them together.

He says abruptly, "Do you mind -- could I have some carnations? I didn't …."

Mrs Boyd says, "Sure, let me get you some," and returns with five of them, all very long stemmed. One is the striped type that his mother had liked the best. All of them smell spicy-sweet.

Derek thanks her quietly and leaves before he does something stupid like cry into her shoulder over stupid carnations and the Mother/Daughter Tea; it takes him a minute before he feels up to starting the car and driving to the cemetery.

He's not surprised to see a blue Jeep there, but he isn't expecting to see Isaac with Stiles, smelling _off_ somehow. Werewolves can't really smell emotions as such, but strong feelings alter scents sometimes; the hormones or something, Derek guesses. He's never been much for theory.

They're both standing silently by the Jeep, Isaac hunched into himself like he's trying to hide from the world. Derek parks the car and comes up up to them. The wind is blowing softly through the trees, bringing the scent of spring all around them. It doesn't smell like death here, like some of the old cemeteries in Louisiana did, not even in the old section where the graves are from the 1800s, and even the Hales had tiny graves carved with lambs to tend.

Derek lifts one arm out a little and Isaac burrows into his side, putting his head against Derek's collarbone, letting Derek rub his cheek against his curly hair.

"No Scott?" he says.

"He's with Allison," says Stiles, hunching into himself. "It's kind of --"

Derek nods. It is a little weird around Allison: he supposes it's always going to be. It's not her fault, or anybody's fault but maybe Derek's, but it's always a little strange for Isaac and Stiles to be around her during Mother's Day. They probably aren't angry at her but -- it's just weird, is all. Victoria's death. He squeezes the back of Isaac's head. Isaac takes a deep, shattered breath. "You smell like flowers," he says into Derek's jacket.

"Boyd's mom gave me some," he says. "You want to give one to your mom?"

"Okay," says Isaac, straightening up. He's not crying; Isaac cries when he's happy or when he's angry. He's a little like Stiles, whose eyes are dry but whose cheeks are blotchy red and whose mouth is a thin, white line. "Did you get one for Stiles' mom, too?"

"Yeah," he says. He cuffs Isaac's head, gently. "I got enough for everybody."

Stiles swallows hard, looks away from Derek. "Thanks," he mumbles.

"Whatever," says Derek, suddenly uncomfortable. "Let's go visit or whatever and then --"

"We can do whatever?" says Stiles. Something like a smile almost flits across his face. "Or we can eat whatever. See whatever. Drive wherever."

"This joke is no longer funny," Derek tells him, and puts his hand on Stiles' back, propelling him toward the cemetery itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everybody brings those fucking costco cookies to the mother/daughter teas, I swear to God. also those tiny cream puff things, but I like those. well, and those chocolate dipped ones. but they also bring that awful heavy dessert bread stuff. and then the tea is just boiled Lipton's. 
> 
> my favorite cookie that I haven't made for a really long time because it is as messy as hell to make are [mountain cookies like this](http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1913,152166-226196,00.html) only without the coconut shavings because ugh coconut.
> 
> Siobhan and I decided that Scott is super weird and angry about Father's Day because of his dad, and so he and Isaac hang out together and Stiles does stuff with his dad, and Scott is weird and resentful about it, and feels bad about it at the same time. Then he feels worse because Isaac's dad, and basically he and Isaac spend Father's Day playing Call of Duty silently leaning up against each other. 
> 
> Which is fair, because Stiles is super weird around Mother's Day and he has really conflicted feelings about that too, so Isaac and Stiles spent _that_ holiday together, sometimes with Derek, and lick their unhealing orphan wounds together silently. It works out.
> 
> when I cook asparagus I usually oven roast it with butter or saute it until kind of mostly cooked through but still a little crunchy. I hear it's pretty good wrapped with bacon or whatever but that seems like unduly fancy cooking to me, and I have never tried it; I like to put a lot of pepper and a goodish amount of salt or that Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning on it. 
> 
> disclaimer: I have never made an asparagus bed or grown asparagus. i have a vague memory of our neighbors making one for my grandparents but I think it died off because the soil on their property is super clay-filled.
> 
>  
> 
> zucchini was made by Satan.


End file.
